Acoustic Performance Benchmarks
Thermal performance is only one aspect of liquid cooling, and here we see the second important element - acoustic performance. How loud are these coolers?
These numbers are relative decibels, that is we put a calibrated microphone in our lab and called the level of sound zero, then we turned the system on with these different CPU coolers and recorded the sound levels to get sound levels relative to that zero.
The Freezone, HyperTX 2, and Swiftech @ 7v were all very quiet. The Swiftech at 12v made a notable noise, and the Eliminator on High was loud enough to be annoying.
It's interesting that the Swiftech H20-120 @ 12v offers almost identical thermal performance under load to the Eliminator - its closest competitor in the price segment - while producing notably less noise.